What Zero Looks Like

He says, What’s the biggest number? 

What’s out there, after atmosphere and space?

We are driving home from preschool. 

There is no biggest number, I say. 

There is always one more. 

He is quiet then, strapped in his car seat,

packing his cheek with one grape

after the other.

I open and close like the sliding doors of my mini-van,

watching him in the rearview mirror of my life.

 How much to say? 

How much not to say?

He says, After the oxygen we breathe

there is space that goes on and on and on. 

It’s called zero.  I stop myself from saying

that it’s not zero, it’s infinity. 

His feet kick against the back of the driver’s seat. 

Zero is when there is nothing, I say, adding

Would you like a cheese cracker?

He says, No thanks.  I’ll have zero cheese crackers. 

Then, to make a point he adds,

And no one knows what zero looks like. 

I am propelled again, a bell, a wooden clapper,

then silence along with the traffic. 

I pull up to the front of the house,

and go around to Nico’s side of the van. 

The capsule pops open he emerges

by his own propulsion, standing on the edge,

about to take one big step onto the curb. 

He holds out a trashy cluster of stems

without one fruit left on it. 

That’s what zero looks like,” he says,

and he drops it into my hand. 

First Place, Lyrical Poetry, Columbine Poets of Colorado, 2015